News & Updates — country & Western

Some may say it's not "cool" to like honky music but those hipster blowhards may be missing out on the godfather of country swing. This fiddlin' bandleader Bob Wills helped set the template for jazzy licks in hillbilly music and his bands burned up dances of up to 10,000 people a night around Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, the West Coast and the South. He originally came from a musical family in Texas and played mostly with young black musicians before hoboing and train-hopping. He married, became a barber and hit the stage as a comic/musician and cut his first records...

The career of the great Bobby Womack spanned many generations, styles and roles...from the doo-wop with his brothers in The Valentinos to session work with everybody from the Rolling Stones to Sam Cooke. He was a major influence on Jimi Hendrix. He was a left-handed guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, producer, soundtrack composer (Across 110th St is a classic!), label head...you have certainly heard the work of Bobby beyond the few songs of his on oldies radio. Just a SMALL sampling of artists he collaborated with include Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Sly & the Family Stone, Gabor Szabo,...

The first "folk" guitarist I got really into was John Fahey and his curious Takoma albums. Fahey's music combined blues, country, classical, avant-garde and finger-pickin' roots styles and other international folk musics all together. From dissonant to haunting, country blues to modal epics, it covered a lot worth hearing. Takoma was his label, started with money saved from his gas-pumping gig and it went on to be a very influential independent label, releasing many classics not only by Fahey, but also records by Bukka White, Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke, Canned Heat, Charlie Nothing, Bola Sete, George Winston and others. He...

A birthday shout-out to the Man In Black, Johnny Cash! He was the first "country" artist I ever respected and I always loved his baritone voice and shuffling-yet-soulful '50s tunes. The fact that he did concerts for incarcerated people, opposed the Vietnam war and included topics (and actions) in respect to indigenous culture gave him a lot of real cred, in my opinion. His music had just the right amounts of country, rockabilly, gospel, blues, folk and even mariachi and he totally OWNED that Nine Inch Nails song. There was nothing artsy about his style, just a direct approach with...

The "Jimi Hendrix of the accordion", Steve Jordan in fact claimed to play 35 instruments (he even played guitar in Willie Bobo's band in the mid-'60s!). He was also a good singer and could even play the cello. He was born to migrant farm workers in Texas and learned accordion as a partially-blind kid, becoming professional at a very young age although he didn't record until the late '50s. He recorded some great soul, blues and even doo-wop early on (check out his version of "Ain't No Big Thing" by The Radiants). He took his conjunto's music and fused it...